Gleanings of the Week Ending August 10, 2013
/The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.
Giant Maya Carvings Found in Guatemala - There are traces of red, blue, green and yellow paint; at some point they should be able to create an image of what it looked like before it became part of the buried foundations of a rectangular pyramid.
Women in Space: A Gallery of Firsts - Historical perspective. The first was way back in 1963….and from the Soviet Union.
Length of Human Pregnancies Can Vary Naturally by as Much as Five Weeks - Previously everyone assumed the variability was from not knowing exactly when ovulation and then implantation of the fertilized embryo occurred …. But this study revealed that even using technology to determine precisely when these events occur, there is still significant variability.
Hot Lava Hits Seawater and Forms Black Sand Beach - Images from Hawaii
Healthy Cooking Oils: 8 New Picks To Try - I’m going to try avocado oil at some point….once I come to terms with how much it costs!
Top 10 College Towns 2013 - These places have appeal to more than just students! Also take a look at the Cost of Living calculator provided by nerdwallet.
Cactus-inspired material cleans oily water - Deep understanding of how nature works can be quite useful - in this case, a potentially new type of filter. It turns out that it may work for aerosolized oil as well.
Baby Owls Sleep like Baby Humans: Owlets Spend More Time in REM Sleep Than Adult Owls - This study confirmed that the generally held notion that birds, like mammal, spend a lot of their sleep time in REM sleep when they are first born and that it declines over time. The correlation of sleep pattern with other aspects of the owls ‘growing up’ was also studied. I particularly liked that the observations in this study were made with sensors on wild owlets that were not harmed at all by the study and the potential the findings have for understanding the impact of sleep patterns in our own species.
Top US States For Solar Energy - The top 5 are: California, Hawaii, Arizona, Maryland, and Delaware. The article provides the criteria used to assess the states.
The Science of Mummies - Technologies applied to studying mummies….many of them non-invasive and non-destructive.
